Tulips trumpet city’s heritage

ALBANY, NY – With Albany’s Tulip Festival less than two weeks away, residents are watching and tending to the colorful flowering tulips that are an integral part of this city’s rich tradition.

The blooming tulips signal the warmer spring weather and more and more Pine Hills residents and business owners can be seen outside, appreciating the many varieties.

“[Tulips] are so full of color,” said Judy Stacey, the Albany city gardener. “They do many, many wonderful things. Some of them change color: the daydream [tulip] starts out a soft buttery yellow and by the third or fourth day it changes to a soft orange. Another favorite is the flare that looks to be a red tulip with yellow edges, but as it develops the inside becomes almost singed splinters of orange and red.”

Tulips planted by Judy Stacey at the intersection of Western and Madison Avenues. (Chelsea Kruger)

Stacey, who plants different types of bulbs and flowers throughout the year, has one goal in mind: to “beautify the city.” She and about 450 volunteers planted more than 210,000 tulip bulbs in 141 varieties during the fall months in preparation for this spring and Albany’s Tulip Fest.

Stacey orders the city tulip bulbs for which Albany is most often recognized directly from the Netherlands – “the largest producer of bulbs and cut flowers in the world,” said Stacey. During October, Stacey and some of her volunteers usually plants tulips at the intersection of Western and Madison avenues in the Pine Hills.

“That is probably the most popular garden in the city because a lot of people drive by it,” Stacey said. “People roll down their windows and yell at us ‘Nice job!’ or I’ll have people tell me ‘I always slow down at that intersection’ and that was my goal: to slow people down.”

Quite an amount of effort goes into planting the bulbs each season, especially at the intersection of Western and Madison Avenues, where Stacey and volunteers plant 13,000 bulbs alone.

“It takes us a couple of weeks to do that Madison and Western garden because we have to do it a bit at a time,” said Stacey. “We have to break it up into sectionsin order to make it manageable. Plus the traffic. It’s the most frequently damaged one. This year we had about five vehicles drive through it.”

The city also wanted to avoid delaying traffic at the intersection because of watering and planting the flowers, so they invested in a sprinkling system. In order to get the sprinklers to both islands, the city had to “drill underneath the blacktop,” Stacey said.

“Safety issue as well,” said Stacy. “We couldn’t be sitting there blocking traffic.”

Although the city put many resources into its gardens, especially in the Pine Hills, it is worth the added effort.

“There’s been specific studies of flowers,” said Matt Scheuler, a gardener for over 20 years and event coordinator at Capital District Community Garden. “It makes people smile immediately— we have some kind of visceral physical response to beauty.”

Gardening can be frustrating at first, especially if the first batch of seedlings never happens to germinate, or sprout. The weather is an integral independent factor, since flowers and plants won’t grow under just any condition – they need sun, the right temperature, and just enough water.

The hard work expended on those little seeds is not fruitless, for some gardeners will grow their own fruits and vegetables that will sustain them and/or their families for months. A program called Community Garden supports the grow-your-own-food concept, and individuals can sign up to participate and grow their own vegetables and fruit.

“Gardening really puts you in a position to fail a lot and to have an opportunity to see that failure isn’t that bad,” said Scheuler. “It’s important to understand your relationship to the planet.”

In the Pine Hills, Ridgefield Park hosts one of about 50 Community Gardens in the Capital District. Community Gardens are growing in popularity, and there is a waiting list of about a year at Ridgefield Park.

Home and business owners in the the Pine Hills with a green thumb can also be seen on their private properties planting their bulbs and seeds in preparation for upcoming growing season.

“Pine Hills is very green in terms of trees and grass in the area,” said Scheuler. “If we were just looking at that, all the trees are reducing the heat of the city, clean the air. If everyone in Pine Hills declared it a chemical free zone, we’d be good.”

Common gardening problems also rise as the flowers grow, whether its environmental matters or external issues.

“The only problem that I find is vehicular homicide of my garden beds,” said Stacey of her tulips. “I have almost no personal/human vandalism. Drunk drivers driving through gardens in the morning is a problem.”
The problems differ for each gardener, but they can have some commonalities.

“The two biggest challenges to city gardening are soil and squirrels,” said Mary Pilkington, a co-chair of the Woman’s Club of Albany Garden Committee. “The city soil is a very heavy clay that is difficult to dig and is sorely lacking in nutrients. It also dries out very quickly. It must continuously be amended with compost which is available from the city.”

Pilkington also mentioned that the city has its own composting facility downtown.

Tulips bloom in the garden at the Woman's Club of Albany. (Chelsea Kruger)

“There are piles of both compost–made from the yard waste the city collects at curbside–and bark mulch,” said Pilkington. “City residents can access these piles using bags or buckets.”

Critters are also a huge issue for home gardeners as well as professional gardeners. Squirrels are predominantly problematic, as well as some mice.

“[Squirrels] are bold, tenacious and prolific,” said Pilkington, who has a private garden at her home and also tends to the Woman’s Club garden. “When you plant something new, they dig it up just in case you really meant to put it someplace else. They also chase each other through flower beds, rolling over and wrestling with one another until they’ve managed to mangle whatever happened to under their furry little bottoms.”

Stacey sees similar problems with squirrels during her 13 years as the city gardener.

“Squirrels like to do to a fair amount of damage if they’re allowed,” Stacey said. “They eat tulip bulbs and hyacinths. Just as the tulip bulb come up, they like to bite the bloom right off its head like they’re going after something that’s tasty right where the stem meets the flower head.”

The Albany squirrels are of a stockier breed of squirrel and can be seen scouring the Pine Hills streets for anything to munch on.

“They eat tulip and other bulbs, sometimes just dig them up and leave them to dry out,” said Pilkington. “They bite off the tulip heads of those that do bloom.”

Despite the challenges, gardening yields positive results which many people can attest to.

“With patience and lots of digging and turning over, miracle[s] are possible,” said Pilkington.

More flowers can be seen throughout the year, but spring is tulip season. The colors and even the smell of Albany’s tulips are pleasant.

“They’re very spectacular,” said Stacey, whose favorite flower is the tulip. “Each one of them seems to have a quality and character all of its own.”

Another tulip. (photo by Chelsea Kruger)

Daffodils in the Woman's Club of Albany garden. (photo by Chelsea Kruger)

More tulips at the Women's Club of Albany garden, planted by Mary Pilkington. (photo by Chelsea Kruger)

Hi-
The tulips are beautiful. I have missed the event the past two years but when will the bulbs be dug up and sold at the lakehouse? I am eagerly awaiting this event and have read about it in the paper previously.
Thanks-
Shirley

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